"You've been the devil of a time," William grumbled. "Cazenove's been waiting for twenty minutes. See that light over there? That's where MacTavish is. He's the winning-post. Keep straight down the mud-track towards it and you'll be all right. Don't swing sideways or you'll get bunkered. Form line. Come up the mule. Back, Cazenove, back! Steady. Go!" The rivals clapped heels to their steeds and were swallowed up in the night. I looked at my watch, the hands pointed to 10.30 exactly. William and I lit cigarettes and waited. At 10.42 MacTavish walked into us, his lamp had given out and he wanted a new battery. "Who won?" we inquired. "Won?" he asked. "They haven't started yet, have they?" "Left here about ten minutes ago," said William. "Do you mean to say you've seen nothing of them?" At that moment two loud voices, accompanied by the splash of liquid and the crash of tin, struck our ears from different points of the compass. "Sounds to me as if somebody had found a watery grave over to the left," said the Babe. "Sounds to me as if somebody had returned to stables over to the right," said I. We trotted away to investigate. 'Twas as I thought; Ferdinand had homed to his Isabella and was backing round the standings once more, trailing the infuriated Albert Edward after him, sheets of corrugated iron falling about them like leaves in Vallombrosa. "Bolted straight in here and scraped me off against the roof," panted the latter. "Suppose the confounded apple-fancier won ages ago, didn't he?" "He's upside down in the Tuning Fork trench system at the present moment," said I. "The Babe and the grooms are digging him out. If you hurry up you'll win yet." We roused out the guard, bore the reluctant Ferdinand back to the course and by eleven o'clock had restarted him. At 11.10 William returned to report that the digging party had salved the Cazenove pair and got them going again. "Too late," said I; "Albert Edward must have won in a walk by now. He left here at..." The resounding clatter of falling sheet-iron cut short my words. Ferdinand had, it appeared, returned to stables once more. Suddenly something hurtled out of the gloom and crashed into us. It was the Babe. "What's the matter now? Where are you going?" we asked. "Wire-cutters, quick!" he gasped and hurtled onwards towards the saddle-room. "Hello there!" came the hail of MacTavish from up the course. "I s-say, what about this blessed race? I'm f-f-rozen s-s-tiff out here. I'm about f-f-fed up, I t-tell you." William groaned. "As if we all weren't!" he protested. "If all the Mess Funds for the next three weeks weren't involved I'd make the silly fools chuck it. Here, you, run and tell Albert Edward to get a move on." I found Ferdinand rapidly levelling the remainder of the standings, playing his jockey at the end of his reins as a fisherman plays a salmon.